I spend more time on YouTube than I probably should. Most of the time I’m on the site, I’m tracking down strange and awesome music videos. But I also love cat videos (big surprise), ridiculous fake alien and UFO videos, videos of people behaving in incredibly unwise ways that are somehow not lethal to them, and pretty much anything that’s got Yackety Sax as its soundtrack.
What do MRAs enjoy watching? As far as I can tell, when they’re not watching videos of other MRAs, or flooding the comments of feminist videos, they like watching videos of women getting punched.
How else to explain the hundred-plus upvotes that greeted this brief video – it’s all of 15 seconds long –of a man knocking out a woman who was assaulting him. The video starts with a fight already in progress, as a woman rains blows on a much larger man backed up against a wall at what seems to be a strip mall while her friends shriek in the background. The man, after fending off a number of punches, hits her directly in the face and she drops to the ground.
That’s it. That’s all we know. We don’t know who these people are, what the fight was about, or even who started it.
But to the denizens of the Men’s Rights subreddit, this is a man who is fully justified in using violence against a woman, and they can barely conceal their excitement, posting dozens of comments proclaiming him a sort of Men’s Rights hero.
“Kudos to the guy who stood up to this bullshit,” dalsgaard declares, in a comment that gets dozens of upvotes. “I hope other men will take his example.”
Tim8080 only wishes he’d been there to take part in the punching:
Actually, the man in question isn’t particularly old, and he’s certainly not frail; he’s actually rather large and imposing.
Gus2144 thinks that for some reason gender equality necessarily involves a lot of hitting:
Evidently in that last comment Gus took it a little too far for his Men’s Rights bretheren, and he garnered himself a few downvotes.
But the serious downvoting in the thread was reserved for those who questioned whether or not MRAs should be celebrating the incident captured on video as a grand victory for Men’s Rights.
Indeed, CapnDancyPants won himself more than two dozen downvotes for simply wondering what might have happened before the fifteen seconds shown on the video:
MRAs: If they can’t punch women, they don’t want to be a part of your revolution.
PS “online atheists” is a term I use to separate the douchey idiot brigade from decent people, ie. all the atheists I’ve met in real life or here, for example! It’s some twits’ behaviour, not atheism, that bugs me.
For what it’s worth Bad_Dog, I’m heading into therapy too. I got shot down a lot whenever I tried talking about my own emotional state, largely because I’m functional by all outward appearances.
That said, when another blog pointed out “Depression Quest”, I found that my “functional” was still described as “You are very depressed. You spend a large amount of time sleeping, hating yourself, and have very little energy and motivation”. Not to mention the state I was in for the rest of the day after playing through it.
Even if this isn’t clinical, I’m sick of it.
@The Kittehs’
I prefer asshole atheists (or Asshole Atheists) because it doesn’t lump good people in with the bad, but I do know who you meant. Atheists are pretty much the most hated group in the US (and I assume in other countries as well, but I’ve only seen numbers for the US). It might be hard for me to judge a group I am in well, but I cut a lot of slack for insults directed at religion. In the same way that (to me) a woman getting frustrated with oppression saying “I hate men” is in no way the same as a man saying “I hate women,” and a POC getting frustrated and saying “White people suck” should never be compared to a white person saying “POC suck,” I just don’t see a frustrated atheist saying “Religious people suck” as being the same as a believer saying “Atheists suck.” I understand that it must feel horrible to be ridiculed, but pales in comparison to what (some) atheists experience because if their lack of belief. And you don’t know what the atheist has been through that led them to be dismissive of belief. Maybe they are just assholes, maybe they have suffered a lot and their reaction is more understandable.
Believers have an awful lot of privilege (although obviously there is a hierarchy), and I think it is easy to forget how much atheists get hurt. And, of course, intersectionality matters (which many atheists need to learn) and in addition to the excellent examples Freemage brought up, I’d like to add that I have been told more than once some variation on “you’re only depressed because you don’t believe in God.” It hurts to have my depression dismissed like that, but it also hurts to have my lack of belief (which gives me tremendous strength) configured as something harmful.
@SomeGal:
Maybe in a lot of countries, certainly not in all countries. In Sweden, religious people are in minority. Exactly how large part of the population is atheist is hard to tell, since different surveys give pretty different results. I guess that’s because there’s no sharp line between agnostic and atheist, so people may respond differently depending on the phrasing of the question. In my experience, it’s fairly common to be like “well, perhaps there’s SOMETHING out there…” when asked about religion. However you count though, atheism is common and downright religious people are a fairly small minority.
What DRIVES ME MAD is when Swedish atheists pretend that they’re some kind of underdogs (often because they’ve read lots of American atheist stuff and come to identify with the plight of American atheists, plus many people really LIKE to think of themselves as underdogs). Like, I’m the only religious person on my job. The. Only. One. Sometimes I talk about my views, sometimes I just shut up. Sort of depends on the context, and whether I feel that I’m gonna be ridiculed or completely roasted or not. At my former job I didn’t bother with “coming out” as religious when the subject were brought up since I wasn’t gonna stay there long anyway, and when the subject was brought up it was like this:
Person A: – Blablabla my sister in law, who’s RELIGIOUS.
Person B: – Really? But is she, like, weird religious or fairly normal anyway?
Person A: – Oh, fairly normal I guess.
I just didn’t feel like commenting there.
Oh, and also, a colleague on my current job were like “but you don’t believe in God! You just sort of believe there might be something!” at me once, which was clearly, in that context, an attempt to compliment me, just like people go “but you’re not fat! You’re just curvy!” at someone who’s obviously fat in a misguided attempt at compliment.
It’s taken me quite some time to understand that it’s SO different to be an atheist in the USA.
Oh, and re psychofarmaka: I need some kind of anti-psychotic med. Although I don’t need it ALL the time I need it in periods. Haldol has worked well for fifteen years. Recently, however, my brain suddenly decided that it doesn’t like Haldol any longer (extrapyramidal side effects). So, gotta find something new that works, gonna go through the entire “human guinea pig” thing again where you try one med after the other… Totally, totally sucks. So my sympathy to everyone else who’s in a similar situation. (Oh, and the converse of “you’re only mentally ill because you’re an atheist” is of course “you’re only religious because you’re mentally ill”.)
All the hugs to everyone who wants one.
I’ll second what Some Gal said about what to look for and what do with a therapist. I fired one who was a terrible fit, and that right there improved my depression about 20%.
Also want to cosign what Freemage mentioned about journaling. I didn’t for my depression, but when I started to get my headaches last year, I kept a very detailed journal. All my neurologist had to was look up my symptoms (she had never seen what I have in practice), and was able to get the treatment ball rolling.
@Bad_dog:
Not only do you have the right to be sad, but you have the right to be normal-sad and not always depressed-sad.
I say this because back when my depression was orders of magnitude worse than it currently is, the thing that annoyed me the most was the way people around me attributed every bad mood I had to my depression. People rarely asked me why I was unhappy or if there was anything they could do to help–clearly, I was unhappy because I was Depressed, and without a Cure (i.e. a pill), no amount of non-medical solutions, such as listening or being nice to me, would have any effect.
This was why I refused to be formally diagnosed–I knew that once someone wrote me a prescription for happy pills, the perpetual response to any unhappiness on my part would be “Take your pill.” Not “Sorry about that, that was douchey of me, I won’t do it again,” not “Do you need a hug?”, not “I hear you, man, work sucks”…but always “Take your pill.” Eventually, in a rare moment of self-respect, I confronted the people in question about this, and they admitted that I was probably right. And–here’s the cool thing–they stopped treating my depression like a Get-Out-Of-Treating-Karalora-Decently-Free card, and started being nicer to me, and I got less depressed. Amazing!
I’m not saying you shouldn’t get diagnosed or go on medication if you think it will help. Just that it wasn’t right for me because of my situation…and the whole ordeal gave me a lot of insight into the difference between being sad and Being Depressed, and that the one doesn’t invalidate the other. Your sadness is still real, even if depression magnifies it out of proportion. People might sometimes treat you otherwise, but they’re wrong.
Best of luck to you.
@ Dvärghundspossen
Sorry. I worded that really badly. I meant some other countries, but reading it back, that totally isn’t what it sounds like. I should have been clearer.
+1 on the people liking to think of themselves as underdogs, I think that is pretty much the biggest problem with American atheists, too. I mean, in terms of religion, they are underdogs, but they get so used to thinking of themselves that way that they forget the rest of us are underdogs in more senses than they are (and many in more sense than I am, which I hope I remember as often as I should). It is, along with hatred, one of the big forces behind the MRM as well.
I still think it is worth cutting anonymous atheists on the internet some slack because while they may be from Sweden and just be assholes, they could be (and in some spaces it is more likely they are) from the US Bible Belt or a place even less friendly to atheists and, the majority of the time, we are an oppressed group and I (again, a possibly biased member of that group) would like the consideration that I (try to) give to oppressed groups I am not a member of and that I expect for other oppressed groups of which I am a member.
I think because of existing taboos regarding talking about/criticizing/questioning religion, when atheists do it in “mean” ways, they aren’t given the same leeway that, say, women are when they discuss men benefitting from male privilege or the mentally ill when they discuss neurotypical privilege. (Just to be clear, there are obviously people who and spaces where and occasions that grant no leeway at all to oppressed groups. I just don’t think that is the standard we should be following.)
@Karalora
*applause*
@SomeGal, I didn’t take offense on what you wrote, I just wanted to add something. And further adding: People can be underdogs in relation to society at large, while still being top dogs in their own subculture. It’s easy to focus on what a tremendous underdog you are in society at large, and forget that in your subculture you’re the privileged one (guess that’s the case with many white males in organized American atheism, at least from what I’ve heard).
@ Dvärghundspossen
I’m glad, but I still should have been clearer. As much as we seem to like to think so, the US is not the whole world and I am always glad when the Manboobz commentariat remind me of that. 🙂
Teh Kitteh’s Unpaid Help: One problem with “online Atheists” as a catch-all for the group we’re talking about is that it also snags, say, everyone over at FreethoughtBlogs and SkepChick–who’ve currently taken up the fight within the atheist community to put down the asshats. (Several of them even link to another blog I think you might’ve heard of ~.@ ). I do like “Asshole Atheists” (I tend to use Douchebag Atheists and Asshat Atheists, myself–the former very specifically makes it clear I’m talking about individuals who are not merely unnecessary, but also very really sexist and harmful to the movement overall). I do try to avoid falling into the No True Scotsman trap, though–these individuals are very much not skeptics (they fail to apply the principles thereof to their own positions), and they sure as hell ain’t humanists (I maintain that it’s impossible to be anti-feminist and humanist, as one sub-example), but they are atheists. Which gets to my next point:
The Douchebag Atheist problem is very much an Atheist problem; they aren’t going away unless they’re beaten down by other Atheists. We’re the ones responsible for cleaning house within the formal movement, and we’re trying, and the only request we have for non-atheists (and even atheistic non-Atheists) is that you let us draw the line between us and them. And for those of you who are atheistic non-Atheists… maybe see if you can find one of the groups/communities that really are trying to change things in the movement? We really could use the support. Freethought Blogs and Skepchick are both usually fun places to hang out at, even the infamous Pharyngula on FtB.
Thanks for advice and relating stories. It certainly helps one feel far less alone and is helping me towards going forward from here. I forgot to mention I did start journaling as well. Mostly to keep track of what makes things worse (or better), but also to keep track of my to do list and goals cuz gawd depression takes up a lot of brain space.
*Opens stall dispensing free hugs, donuts, coffee and baby kisses*
Actually, perhaps I should charge 1 diaper for 5 minutes of baby cuddling.
You don’t even have to change ’em. Just gimme a diaper. My kids’re going through them like anything.
@Falconer
What you need to do is find a group of young late teens or early twenties women who have dropped out if college for any reason that isn’t having babies of their own. According to the diaper manufacturers, the only reason for a young woman to leave college is a baby. When I did it, we were getting free samples for years afterwards. (Long after, if I had given birth, the kid would have been potty-trained.) 🙂
This has been not-real-practical-advice from Some Gal.
Some Gal: That’s… I am now trying to wrap my head around that one. It’s like, I’m ninety-nine percent certain it’s sexist as all get-out, but pinning down the exact aspect of it that qualifies is tricksy.
Ooh, that sounds really privilege-y. And only a day after we were talking about the murder rate for trans* people being 1 in 20.
I take it you haven’t seen the studies about athiests.?
Atheists (compared to other religions) are the most distrusted and hated group.
Even my parents balk at My atheism. And I think my parents are fairly open minded.
As far as the underdog thing the same thing goes for feminism. I know that because I’m white and conventially attractive that I am privileged within that group. However, I’ve met feminists who pretend their experience is the same as a women of color.
* sorry about any errors my phone is even harder than my iPod…..
Yeah, I agree, Katz. There’s a lot of anti-atheist sentiment, it’s true–for one thing, among a huge list of demographic sub-populations, there’s more folks out there who would refuse to vote for an atheist who agreed with their policy positions than anyone other group on the list. But then, the poll doesn’t even ASK about transgender. So… yeah. The notion that we’re “most hated” is kinda silly.
Atheists also carry what’s called “passing privilege” in some transgender circles–we can effectively ‘disappear’ if we need to, at a fairly low personal cost. Many trans* people cannot (as they either must be lucky enough to be able to “pass”, or dress counter to their actual identity, thus deepening the various psychological pressures), and thus they are more easily targeted, even by an individual who might share equal levels of hostility to both.
Okay, Melody, I think part of the problem is you’re comparing apples and oranges. “Most hated” religious group, I’d buy (though even that might be a stretch–I genuinely believe that, say, a member of Westboro Baptist Church would place even behind the atheist candidate). But as noted above, religion isn’t the only measure. (Also, I’d be more prone to saying we’re the ‘least liked’, which is different than ‘most hated’–more people may distrust atheists, but you don’t hear about people busting into Freedom From Religion Foundation meetings and opening fire–but you DO hear that in reference to race, gender, etc. So we’re not liked or trusted by a larger swathe of humanity, but at the same time, there’s other folks with much greater HATE pointing at them).
There is also the thing where there may be a lot more people who are aware that they hate/distrust atheists, but the people who hate trans* people hate a whole lot stronger and more dangerously. So even the words “most hated” are unhelpfully vague.
@katz
I said “pretty much” because the stats show atheists to be the most hated of the groups asked about, but (of course) they don’t ask about every group. I haven’t seen a study that asked about trans* vs. atheist, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the results showed either on the bottom since on the one hand, the murder rate shows that there is some real hatred going on, but trans* people can still be religious and that seems to make people “good” according to some people.
PPRI poll here.
I am still trying to find the link for the study I am thinking of and not a description of it, but the PPRI found that trans* people were more accepted than gays and lesbians and the study I am looking for found that gays and lesbians were more accepted than atheists.
So, perhaps defining “most hated” would be worthwhile? I certainly believe that when they are hated, trans* people are hated more strongly than atheists. (I would say the same is true of many minorities, like Jewish people for example, who are “liked” by something like 90% of people*) However, I don’t know for sure if that makes them the most hated.
*Another study I can go find, but that I know because it spurred a discussion between my best friend and I about how saying “Yes, I like them.” probably should be translated more as “I hate Hitler” than “I am not an anti-Semite.”
@Freemage
You posted while I was typing, but perhaps “least liked” would be better, although I am not sure that that solves the problem of trying to figure out American attitudes. (I am setting aside anywhere else until I at least find what I am looking for.)
Do we even track murderer of atheists in the US?
*murders